Still Separate, Still Unequal

Jonathan Kozol

Quotes:

  1. “There is something deeply hypocritical about a society that holds an eight-year-old inner city child ‘accountable’ for her performance on a high stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years earlier.”

-          - In this quote I think Kozol really brings to light the way those in charge of our educational system can so easily brush aside minority and poor children. These people don’t step outside themselves and feel what the families of these children are feeling. If it were their own children’s education at risk, the system in these schools would be very different.

2. “Do kids who go to schools like these enjoy the days they spend in them?”

-           - The way these schools are described by Kozol is in a very systematic way. It makes education seem like a math problem, in which you have to do this and this in order to get the correct solution. In reality this makes day to day school seem like a boring task children must endure. Which I believe in turn may make a much higher drop-out rate when these kids reach highschool.

3. “At Fremont High, in contrast, this requirement was far more often met by courses that were basically vocational and also obviously keyed to low-paying levels of employment.”  (p.18)

-           - Following this statement was a conversation between a few students and Kozol. I found this conversation along with this quote to be the most powerful piece of this article. Intellgent students from these low income areas are seen as not that important. Those in charge of our educational system believe that there will have to be low paying jobs in the future and who’s going to do them? The wealthy, powerful people whose voices are heard do not want their children working in these factories and diners so these vocational courses are provided in inner cities rather than wealthy neighborhoods. It’s an obvious thing that happens but that we all seem to just not openly talk about.

Questions/Comments/Points to Share: 

    Although it was upsetting and disturbing to read this article, I did enjoy how open and honest Kozol was. The letters written by the eight-year-old students brought an emotional side to the reading. This article very much related to “The Silenced Dialogue” by Delpit. They both talk about the poor minority population getting the shaft when it comes to education. These children and their parents are not being heard. Instead, they are given excuses or what I think sound like cover-ups. They are making it seems as if they’re trying to put effort into these students educational, when in reality they are not.